April 30, 2017

Like that farm family during The Great Depression and early World War II, "Blue Bloods" depicts close bonds among several generations of one family. We who lacked or might still lack that kind of group cohesion grab onto all the sharing and support.

"The Waltons" ran from 1972 to 1981. Its signature was the good-nights the members of the family wished each other at the end of each episode. They were already in bed. For "Blue Bloods" it's the family Sunday dinner.

Hopefully, the creatives producing "Blue Bloods" have prepared a soft landing for audiences if Grandpa - Henry Reagan- dies while the series is still being filmed. He is played by Lou Cariou. His role is to be an ear for his son Francis Reagan who is Police Commissioner. Any advice Gramps provides is done with great brevity.

During "The Waltons," Gramps - Zebulon Tyler Walton - did die. He had been played by social activist Will Geer. We in the audience loved him for both his real life and television roles. It was not easy letting go of him.

On "Blue Bloods," Francis, who goes in public by "Frank," already has endured so much loss. Those included his wife, son and former partner who went into the Tower with him on 9/11. Only recently has Frank seemed on the other side of grief.

Should Frank lose his father, it will be hard not only on him. I wonder how we in the audience, for whom the Reagans have been a surrogate family, will get through that.

I recommend a memorial in New York City to help us cope with the passing of Henry Reagan.

St. Patrick's Cathedral is just the right setting. The Reagans are proud of being Roman Catholics.

During his speech at the National Rifle Association event, Donald Trump referred to U.S. senator Elizabeth Warren as "Pocahontas."

That was Trump's way to discredit her claim of being part Native American.

It also sounds exactly like we all talked in the old neighborhood. And that kind of raw rhetoric is part of the president's genius stagecraft.

Many forget that Trump grew up in Queens, New York. Not Manhattan. Although his section of Queens was not poor-Bronx or downtown Jersey City, New Jersey (pre-gentrification), it had much of the rough-and-tumble ethos of those mid-20th century urban areas.

In the old neighborhood, everyone had a nickname which stuck.

My uncle had red hair. Although it quickly disappeared, until he died he was called "Red."

The boy "Bobby Around the Corner" remained "Bobby Around the Corner" decades after he no longer lived around the corner.

We children were authentically shocked that, when the elderly woman we called "Vinegar Feet" died, the Jersey Journal didn't refer to her by that name in the obituary.

In addition to nicknames, there was a direct way of describing everything.

The boys in ABC family "were headed for jail." They were not described as "youth at risk." It wasn't until our generation went to college, then worked in Corporate America that we were socialized to be long-winded and indirect.

Remember those term papers and business memos which used lots of words to say nothing? Was the objective really that: not to say anything?

Looking back to all that, it seemed like there was a grand puppet master manipulating the masses into wordy powerlessness. In return for surrendering our soul, we received an academic degree and lifetime employment.

What Trump seems to be promising is a return to the power of language. That resonates. Otherwise he wouldn't have been elected. And his speeches wouldn't be receiving so much media attention

It wasn't until 2005, when I launched this blog, that I circled back to my rhetorical roots from the mean streets of Jersey City. Immediately, my voice was noticed. It was heard - around the world.

Takeaway to public speakers: Prepare for your speech by sitting in a coffee shop in an un-gentrified neighborhood. Listen. Figure out what is so compelling. Then apply that to what you will say and how.

A book lover and ghostwriter of books, I used to feel "at home" at Barnes & Noble brick & mortar stores. Not any more.

Yesterday, when I was on the line to buy a B&N gift card for a client, I was referred to as a "guest." The context was that a second clerk had been assigned to the payment counter. She asked the "next guest" to step to her station.

What a bad branding move. The way to get B&N growing again is to make those involved with books feel a part of the bookstore. Not a guest. I am tempted to refer to it on my blogs as "Hotel B&N." After all, that's where guests hang out.

Recently B&N had replaced, yet again, its chief executive officer. That's its 4th in 4 years. Here's the coverage from Fortune.

If this "guest" stuff continues, eventually there will be no ceo. Instead there will be no more B&N, just as there is no more Border's.

April 29, 2017

The Drudge Report is no slouch in moving to where the news is being made: Can the Trump Administration pull off a Ronald Reagan Tax reform. And have the bill passed before the end of 2017. The First 100 Days story is old, at least in digital media time.

Here is the take on that tax reform by The Washington Post, which the Drudge Report links to.

What WaPo points out is that it took The Great Communicator - Reagan - 500 days to achieve the kind of tax reform. And it hasn't happened again since.

Even for Reagan, that overhaul wasn't possible until the beginning of his second term. In contrast, the Trumpetts have decided on a much faster track.

That's no surprise since the White House needs a major legislative victory. That will send the message that this gang, who couldn't get TrumpCare done, has learned how Washington D.C. works.

The early defeat of TrumpCare will be forgotten. A tax reform victory could be the platform for myriad other wins. Being re-elected in 2020 could become possible. Also, the GOP could maintain control of Congress.

Meanwhile, of course, investigative journalists will keep raising the question: Who are really the puppet masters and who are the puppets in this new world order?

Is Trump just the front man for a cabal of billionaires?

If that is the situation, does such a reality bother him?

Or does he need The Show too much?

Reflection: Trump's ideal job might have been to build and grow a kind of Fox News. Unfortunately for liberals, Roger Ailes got there first.

What generations before him called a "prank," Millennial IT expert and MIT alumnus - Nicholas Paggi - thought of as "hacking." That was his mindset.

Both pranks and hacking break the normal rules of order. If they turn out well, everyone, especially the creators, have a lot of fun.

Yet, pranks and hacks can go very wrong. In our generation, those who crossed the line into illegal wound up in a courtroom. They could also wind up staying on the right side of law but dead. The same is happening with Millennials.

Paggi, as the New York Post reports, died while attempting to "hack the dome" at MIT. That has been a quest among many associated with that STEM-oriented institution of higher learning in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

They are smart and are on their way to or have already earned an elite academic credential. Since those degrees are associated with STEM, their value is way up. No question, the MIT-kinds of hacker perceive themselves as invulnerable.

Paggi's fatal accident during a hack won't be the end of fun. The takeaway, though, is that those who hell-bent on pulling one off should be aware of the risk. Fun doesn't insulate human beings from reality.

The most recent pounding we receive is that we didn't pick up enough STEM courses in college. As a result, we are told we are everything from scientifically illiterate to increasingly unemployable.

In short, no job interviews at Google for us. That assumes, of course, that we want to be a Googler, as the employees there are called.

Not too long ago, we were hammered because our degrees weren't in business. That was when business as a stand-alone was the unofficial religion of America.

Now, being a plain-vanilla businessperson, even on Wall Street, is certainly not enough. One must be a businessperson changing the world through digital technology.

Oh, I did my time feeling very very bad about a choice I had made when I was 18 years old. That was 1963. Sometimes I still can travel the road of regret.

But. the raw reality is that so many of us who majored in the humanities are making a good living. Often, we enjoy what we do. We haven't been put in prison for engineering a brilliant and profitable hack. Statistics show we are less likely than medical doctors, who are a part of STEM, to commit suicide.

Also, it has been observed that regret is merely a fantasy of what might have been. In this volatile world order, the odds are that what we imagined would have played out wouldn't have.

One more thing: Back when I entered college, there was no computer science major. There weren't even computers.